


Sidekicks

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: (but that's not all they are), Alternate Universe, Caitlin is a Manic Pixie, Cisco is a Grouch, F/M, Swapped Personalities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 18:10:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14982722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Quirky Caitlin Snow is delighted by the possibilities of having the fastest man alive at Star Labs, but her dour co-worker Francisco Ramon is less enthused. Still, she knows they can all do great things . . . if she can talk Cisco into it.





	Sidekicks

**Author's Note:**

> Behold! My first story for Killervibe Fanfic Week 18. Today's theme is Role Reversal. I thought this was a pretty fun prompt, and of course, the first thing I thought of was Cisco Frost and Caitlin Vibe. That would have been pretty neat! But then I started to wonder what they would be like with swapped personalities, and that notion wouldn’t let go. So here you go. Some dialogue taken from episode 1x01 and tweaked.

Francisco Ramon had pulled his hair back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck, one so secure that the wind whipping down the runway didn’t budge a single strand. Barry wondered if it gave him a headache. Maybe that was why he had such a dour expression.

He shoved his thick-framed glasses up his nose and studied Barry like he was a bug. “We’ve theorized that you were moving so fast, it only appeared that the world was slowing down. That’s what we’re testing now.” He glanced back at the other two people from Star Labs. “Dr. Wells will be monitoring your energy output, and Dr. Snow, your vitals.”

“And what do you do?”

“I build the equipment, of course,” the other man said. He held up a black circle with a lightning bolt on it. “This is a two-way headset that I’ve modified, with a camera attached. It’s designed to combat battlefield impulse noise.”

“Or a sonic boom,” Barry suggested.

“The speed of sound is three hundred and thirty-two miles per second. It’s unlikely.”

Okay. Fine then. He took the black circle in his fingers and studied it. “I like the lightning bolt.”

Francisco rolled his eyes and took it back. “That was Caitlin.”

Caitlin herself strolled up. The wind tossed her pink-streaked braids and set her bright blue dress and man’s trench coat flapping  She grinned at Francisco. “Are you complaining about my lightning bolt again?”

“It’s pointless,” he grumbled, yanking the helmet off Barry’s head.

“It keeps it from being boring!”

“It doesn’t need to be exciting, it just needs to work.”

“It can work and not be boring,” Caitlin said, pulling a gummy bear out of her pocket and popping it in her mouth. The three or four charm bracelets tangled around her wrist jingled.

He grumbled under his breath and took the helmet back to the table where Dr. Wells sat.

Caitlin rolled her eyes and muttered, “Stick in the mud.” She turned back to Barry. “Okay. Let’s get you synced up and see what you can do.”

“You’re a doctor?” he said doubtfully as she jabbed at the various sensors on his chest with purple-glittered nails, then tapped her tablet. “Like, really a doctor?”

“Nah, you got me. I printed my M.D. from the Internet.” She ate another gummy bear. A stray sunbeam bounced off the pink sequined heart on the front of her dress and momentarily blinded him.

“Wait, what?”

Her mouth quirked up on one side. “Yes. I’m a real doctor. School loans and everything.”

“It’s just that you’re not - uh.”

“Very professional-looking?” She flicked the pink-striped braid back over her shoulder. “Oh, I know. And I did spend a lot of years conforming. Pencil skirts, little pearl studs - ” She shook her head so that the mess of metal that swung from her earlobes jingled cheerfully. “- neutral nail polish, that kind of thing.”

“What happened?”

“The same thing that happened to you.” She made a note in her tablet. “My once-promising career in bioengineering is over, my boss is in a wheelchair for life, and the explosion that put you in a coma also killed my fiancé. So, I figure I’ve got fuck-all to lose by wearing leggings with cats on them to work.”

He glanced down automatically. Not only did her leggings have cats, they were also floating in outer space.

He looked back up, and she smirked at him. “Cute, huh?”

He smirked back. “Bet your co-worker over there loves that.”

But instead of agreeing, she said, “Look, Cisco’s kind of a stiff. I’ll give you that. But he’s the most brilliant, inventive mechanical genius you’ll ever meet. Ever. And he’s there when you need him.”

Probably with a judgemental frown. Or a lecture. “Cisco? He said to call him Francisco.”

“Yeah, you should probably stick to that for awhile, until he decides to let you in.”

Barry looked over his shoulder at the scowling young man, working on his machines. “I’m not holding my breath.”

“Give him some time. Let him warm up to you. In the meantime, don’t push it.”

Barry decided it was unlikely. “Do _you_ think I can break the speed of sound?” It felt possible to him, with the lightning crackling in his blood.

“Tell you what,”  she called over her shoulder, already on the way back to the RV. Her heavy Doc Martens splashed through a puddle. “If you do, I’ll give you a gummy bear.”

* * *

When Cisco drifted into her lab, she didn’t look up as she asked, “So, what do you think of our speedster?”

“So he runs fast. It’s scientifically intriguing, but functionally pointless.”

“You’re just annoyed because the blowback landed you on your ass out there.” She lifted her head and grinned at him.

He scowled at her in a way that as good as admitted she was right. “Really. What can he do with that ability?”

“What can’t he do with it? He makes Usain Bolt look like a grandma in a walker. Fastest man alive!”

“This is real life, not a comic book.”

“You could fool me, lately.” She looked up. From this angle, she could see one of the “teeth” that curved over Star Labs, broken in half by the explosion nine months ago. “Maybe a superhero would have stopped this from happening.”

She wanted to bite her own tongue off when she heard the words slip out. Wincing, she turned to look at Cisco.

He’d taken off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “We didn’t need a superhero. We needed better engineers.”

He always looked younger with his glasses off. She suspected that was why he wore them, and why he tied his hair back so tightly.

“Hey,” she said. “How many times do I have to say it? That - ” She gestured up at the broken tooth. “ - was not your fault. Ronnie was not your fault.”

“If I’d done better - if I’d made a different choice - you would still have him.”

“Maybe,” she acknowledged. “And if I hadn’t asked him to come along, he wouldn’t have been here that night. And if his mom had never flirted with his dad at the roller rink in high school, he wouldn’t have been born.”

Cisco gave her a long suffering look.  

“My point is, you can what-if until the cows come home, but this is the world we live in.” She bit her lip, thinking of the engagement ring entombed in her jewelry box at home. But that hurt, a knot right under her breastbone, and she said, “Speaking of that, do you ever wonder about those cows? I mean, what are they doing out so late? Probably up to no good. Bovine delinquents.”

Cisco’s mouth quirked up at the corner, and she felt a flush of triumph. She didn’t get a smile out of him very often. “Your shoe’s untied,” he said.

She glanced down. “Oh, yeah. I’ll get them in a moment. I’m almost done with these samples.” She didn’t want to have to put on a new pair of sterile gloves after she’d handled her dirty shoelaces.

He nudged her wheely office chair over to her. “Put your foot up.”

She raised her brows, but propped her foot on the seat. He leaned over, took her loose laces, and retied them. Double-knotted, of course. He gave the toe of her boot a quick pat and straightened up. “There,” he said. “I imagine it’s not very sterile to trip over your shoelaces and faceplant into your lab bench, either.”

She settled her foot back on the floor, feeling a flush creep up her face. “Not particularly, no.” She focused on her samples again.

When she had them all prepped and set up for the morning, she looked over at him. He was fiddling with her shelf of beakers, turning them all so they faced the same direction. “Hey,” she said. “What are you thinking about?”

“Air friction,” he said, brows drawn together in concentration.

Her hands paused. What had she thought he was going to say? _I’m thinking about the way I look at you sometimes, when you don’t think I notice? I’m wondering if you ever look at me that way?_

(The answer was yes, but it wasn’t an answer she was ready to give. Not yet.)

“Of course you are,” she said, stripping her gloves off and chucking them toward the trash can. She started to put everything else away. “What else?”

“We clocked him at 220 miles per hour today. He only ran about a mile, but what if he does longer runs? The effect of air friction would be considerable.”

Caitlin considered it as she hoisted herself up on the counter. She leaned over and pulled open a drawer, plucking out a mini Krackel bar. “His skin should be okay - he’s got that healing factor - but his clothes, his shoes? Yeah, they’d be pretty thrashed, I’d say.”

She unwrapped the chocolate bar and bit in half. With her mouth full, she rummaged through the drawer for a moment and then held out a piece of candy. Dark chocolate with almonds.

He started to tell her he didn’t snack between meals. She knew it, she could hear the words practically gathering up on his tongue. But he took the candy bar and unwrapped it carefully, biting off the corner.

The only reason she didn’t throw all the dark-chocolate-with-almonds away when she filled her chocolate stash was because they were his favorite. Weirdo, she thought fondly.

“Since you brought it up,” she prompted. “I’m guessing you got something in mind for air friction?”

“I have been working on that heat-resistant material.”

“The fire suit?”

“The fire suit.”

She played with the wrapper from her candy bar. “Just for proof of concept, of course,” she said innocently.

He shot her a look from behind his glasses, but before he could say anything, the door to the cortex thumped open and Barry’s voice called out, “Guys? Hey, where is everyone?”

She called out, “In here!” and Barry appeared with two large boxes in his arms.

“Hey,” he said. “You guys got some time to talk?”

“I was about to go home for the night,” Cisco said coolly.

“But we can make the time,” Caitlin said, giving him a warning look. He pushed his glasses up in a gesture of annoyance, but didn’t argue.

“Great,” Barry said, thumping both boxes down on the table and pulling files out. “I’ve been going over unsolved cases from the past nine months. There’s been a sharp increase in unexplained deaths and missing people… .”

Caitlin listened as Barry explained what he wanted to do. _Superhero_ , she thought. _He wants to be a real-life superhero._

She looked across the table at Cisco. He had his arms folded tightly, his hands gripping the opposite elbows. His face looked blank as he stared down at the files scattered over the table. Unexplained deaths, missing persons, general weirdness. They all knew that Central City had gotten much weirder lately.

If all of them, or even some of them, were due to the particle accelerator explosion, then that was even more that they needed to atone for. But if Barry’s idea panned out, maybe they could actually start on that instead of marinating in regrets.

“I can’t do it without you,” Barry finished up. He glanced at Caitlin, and then looked longer at Cisco.

When Cisco lifted his head, though, it wasn’t to return Barry’s gaze. Instead, he looked up at her. Anybody who didn’t know him wouldn’t have been able to see the mix of emotions bubbling in his eyes. Uncertainty, hope, wariness, excitement.

She knew him.

She tilted her head and raised her brows. He let out a little sigh and pressed his lips together. She smiled at him.

“If we’re going to do this,” he said slowly, as if the words were being pulled out of him, “I have something that might help.”

FINIS


End file.
